For almost a century, European and American styles of modern dance have followed different paths.

Ever since the early 20th-century heyday of Mary Wigman and Kurt Jooss, Europeans have been interested in combining dance with theater in daring ways. The term “expressionist dance” has been associated mainly with choreographers whose work unabashedly gave us characters, dramatic situations and concepts with a capital “C” and offered a stark contrast to the cool abstractions of American postmodernism.

The program that Nederlands Dans Theater 1 brought to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Friday felt like a primer on European modern dance history. It even paid homage to that granddaddy of European modernism, “The Rite of Spring.”

Founded in 1959, NDT is one of Europe’s leading modern dance companies, and it was headed for almost three decades by one of Europe’s most brilliant choreogaphers, Jiří Kylián.

The company’s current artistic director, British-born Paul Lightfoot, and his longtime choreographic partner Sol León were represented by two works that show the influence of Kylián. Their dances also offer a catalogue of other styles, from Pina Bausch to Maurice Béjart, and the duo’s fourth-wall-breaking tendencies are reminiscent of the challenges that Israeli-born choreographer Ohad Naharin likes to throw at the audience.

But in many respects, Lightfoot León, as the pair likes to call themselves, are masters of their own strange and beautiful universe.

In “Same Difference” (2007) seven performers act out ritualized patterns of speech and movement that seem at times like stylized Tourette Syndrome.

According to the program notes, the work “was inspired by the chaotic influence the ego has on the individual, and how one can easily distance oneself from it.”

As a Philip Glass score drones hypnotically, each dancer presents his or her character, each seemingly trapped in his or her own world.

Jorge Nozal plays a slowly marching soldier, his step periodically interrupted by spastic tics and jerky arm movements; he mumbles snatches of sentences as if haunted by past battles and atrocities. Medhi Walerski is a mad poet who shouts phrases such as “I am not here!” Marne van Opstal and Bastien Zorzetto play twins in black shirts called “The man who is not” and “his double.” And so on.

For all its high-pitched existential angst, “Same Difference” was the most mannered and least effective work of the evening. It lacks cohesion and the sense of a through-line or story governing the moments of madness. For that reason, you’re forced to take it in from moment to moment, and as a result it seems fragmented, repetitive and draggy.

“Shoot the Moon” (2006), accompanied by another Glass score, was more satisfying. Set inside a revolving set, the action takes place in three similar rooms, each with a door and window. It is described as an intimate peek into the intertwined love lives of five people – three men and two women. Performers manually rotate the set periodically to create changes of scene. Above, two large screens show us larger-than-life live video images of the performers from time to time.

“Shoot the Moon” shifts seamlessly from solo to pas de deux to frozen image; at times the performers simply hang mysteriously from the walls. Your focus is expertly guided from live performance to video image and back again as wordless dramas unfold and relationships between characters are hinted at via the interconnecting doors and windows.

The work is full of subtlety and grace. For example, we see a man and a woman turn away from each other; on screen, their images are flip-flopped so they seem to face one another. As the woman walks away, her video image walks toward the man then disappears off the edge of her screen, as if absorbed into him.

This is a work that will leave you talking excitedly about many things, especially the mesmerizing performances of the theatrically gifted NDT dancers. Once again, Walerski was a standout.

The evening began with choreography by the multi-talented Walerski. “Chamber” is the result of a collaboration between the choreographer and composer Joby Talbot and was inspired by the centennial of the debut of “Rite of Spring.”

Like “Rite,” Walerski’s work is ritualistic and at times savage. Lighting designer Jordan Tuinman creates a murky atmosphere full of strange foreboding as the 18 dancers perform minimalist movements in a long line. Several pas de deux reveal more tender and erotic aspects of the ritual.

In its final scene, “Chamber” imitates “Rite” more blatantly. A man and woman are surrounded by a rotating circle of dancers, and Talbot’s metallic, noisy score gets more primal. At this and other points, fans of European modern dance might be reminded not of Stravinsky’s and Nijinsky’s “Rite, but Pina Bausch’s. Given the tone of the evening, that connection seemed just right.

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